I’d hate to be Senator Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel right now, when resigned Customs Commissioner John Philip Sevilla has left him with an investigation in search of something to investigate. Those who plotted this whole scheme must be so proud of themselves.
Sevilla, in case you didn’t know, has backtracked on his original claim, made right before and after he quit, that he could no longer take the pressure being applied to him to raise election campaign funds and to appoint undeserving officials to choice posts in the bureau. Sevilla has since gotten “on message,” as they say in Malacañang, saying now that some people merely talked to him with no apparent attempt to pressure him.
It’s a variation of the old “resigned for health reasons” or because of a desire “to return to the private sector.” Now nobody really knows why he quit – and no one is telling.
The real reason is that President Noynoy Aquino and his economic hatchet man, Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima, have decided that Sevilla is no longer useful as Customs Commissioner. And so he was forced to quit, so that he may be replaced by businessman Alberto Lina, who will presumably do a better job than Sevilla did.
This is why the position Sevilla left was immediately filled right after he announced that he was leaving: because the deed was planned way in advance.
Of course, as many have already pointed out, Aquino has not had the time to fill up vacant positions probably as important as the top Customs post, but which have remained unoccupied. I’m talking about the chairmanship of the Commission on Elections, the director-generalship of the Philippine National Police and the top post at the Civil Service Commission, to name just three.
At a time when the means of conducting next year’s elections is still up in the air and when the crime situation is getting worse, you’d think that Aquino would have given the task of filling these vacancies a little more priority. But he had all the time in the world – through Purisima – to plan and execute the removal of Sevilla and to appoint Lina over at Customs.
This is how you do it, Purisima (whose hold on Customs and all other agencies under his department is legendary) seems to be saying when he implemented the removal of Sevilla. And if something unexpected comes up, like Sevilla complaining about the reason for and the manner of his removal, then you quickly move to get him to go recant.
Finance’s Purisima is so much more cunning than the universally condemned PNP chief with whom he shares a surname. I really don’t know if the two Purisimas are related, but one of them certainly has more brains than the other, who can’t even plan and supervise a proper extraction of a known terrorist.
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I’ve written before, after Aquino fired his first Customs commissioner, Angelito Alvarez, about how the person who holds this important position needs to have a direct line to the President himself, if he is to succeed. After all, the way things work at Customs, all manner of people can be expected to drop the President’s name in a bid to seek favors from the commissioner.
If a Customs chief has a direct line to the President, he can easily verify if, say, the President really wants someone allegedly being pushed by the influential Iglesia ni Cristo to become head of the bureau’s police force. But if the commissioner can’t pick up the phone and talk directly to the President, then that official is a sitting duck for the people who actually have that access.
Purisima has always had that access, which is why he has made sure that the people who get the Customs post do not have it. From Alvarez to Ruffy Biazon to Sevilla, all these commissioners can only get to Aquino if they go through Purisima.
I don’t know if Purisima has made a deal with his old “Hyatt 10” colleague, Lina, that the logistics magnate cannot go directly to the President for his concerns. And because of his standing in the business community, I’m assuming that Lina will not allow himself to be used by Purisima, the Liberal Party or anyone else in continuing the unsavory practice of raising campaign funds through corruption in the bureau.
All I’m thankful for is that the reign of this more scheming and dangerous Purisima is coming to an end when the term of the President who appointed him – and who has basically ceded all economic policy to his finance secretary – ends next year. When the truth finally comes out, I’m certain that Cesar Purisima has done more damage to this country than Alan Purisima ever did.
(Of course, I’ve also heard that Purisima is, this early, already reaching out to Vice President Jejomar Binay, in a bid to ensure that he retains an important position in case Binay wins. But that’s another story for another time.)
Meanwhile, I wish Purisima would give Senator Pimentel a call to tell him that the Sevilla story is well and truly dead. The poor senator, who is a palace ally, after all, deserves that, at the very least.